Glue Factory dancers adeptly strip off veneer of life
Who are you when no one’s watching? What do you unmask when it’s just you, alone, with your thoughts?
It’s an evocative question, the kind that veteran artist/choreographer Beth Corning excels at digging into, with just the right mix of sensitivity, humor, obscurity and unabashed honesty.
That’s just what she’s delivered in “IN HOUSE — intimate interiors,” her latest dance theater undertaking for the Glue Factory Project by artists 40 and older. Performances run through Sunday inside the Mattress Factory’s Monterey Houseannex on the North Side.
In keeping with the spirit of the Glue Factory Project, Ms. Corning was joined by seasoned performers John Giffin and John Gresh. Dominique Serrand, a Tony Award winner and artistic director for The Moving Company in Minneapolis, directed the program. She strayed from Glue Factory tradition, though, and invited a couple of upand-coming talents — Kristin Lyndal Garbarino and Patricia Petronello — to join them.
Another nuance was the venue. Rather than her usual black-box set-up in the New Hazlett Theater, the audience of 20 (divided in two groups of 10) navigated six rooms inside the artsy Monterey House during the course of the one-hour piece. This is where things took a “Rear Window” sort of turn. Like James Stewart’s character, we’re tasked with piecing together what was unfolding in the lives of those in each room — and how their worlds relate (or don’t) to those unfolding in the rooms next to them.
In one, Ms. Corning emerged downing a drink in a bath robe, her mop of red hair disheveled. She danced a clumsy pas de deux with her briefcase. Next door, Mr. Gresh in a stained tee and boxers tried to lift himself out of a “real crappy day” with some jovial dancing to oldies on a record player. Downstairs, Ms. Garbarino and Ms. Petronello wrestled in solitude with their own demons. Art on display by David Pohl, David Ellis, Allan Wexler, Bill Woodrow, Jene Highstein and Vanessa German added to the mood and ambient sound.
They all came together for a dinner party in Mr. Giffin’s corner of the house. Before they arrived, he slipped out of a bubble gum-pink frock and red dangling earrings and into a traditional men’s sport coat and slacks. (“Dress as a man,” he instructs himself.) His guests tried to be polished versions of themselves, too, and what followed was a commentary on conformity and “chasing the carrot” (or, in this case, a Hershey’s kiss in a red foil wrapper) that teetered between comical and uncomfortable in all the right ways.
If you’ve ever questioned how you’ve gotten so caught up in life’s rat race — but then faced the world with a stiff upper lip, an attempt to be what’s expected (or what you think society expects) — you’ll find something to savor in “IN HOUSE.” It’s airy enough for audiences to color in the blanks, but not so abstract that it’s like deciphering a Jackson Pollock. But like a Pollock, it will likely leave you asking lots of questions, such as, who are you when no one’s watching?